Open WeChat wallet outside China – Without Chinese ID or Account

China has almost completely moved towards cashless mobile payments. Every shopkeeper in mainland China is now using WeChat or AliPay as a payment method. Now this is very convenient for someone who is from China but what if you are visiting China or you are dealing with someone who can only pay via WeChat. Whatever the case may be, you will need to open WeChat wallet to receive, send or transfer any funds from the app. Today I will show you how you can open WeChat wallet outside China without Chinese ID or Bank account.

Open WeChat wallet outside China without Chinese ID or Bank Account

Benefits of WeChat wallet

Before I show you how to open it, let me tell you why you should have a WeChat wallet if you have any link with China. Let’s suppose you are a tourist visiting China. Now, I don’t have to tell you that when you visit China, you but a lot of things for yourself and gifts for others. Usually people of China will quote a lot more for everything to you, if you are paying in cash. That is not because they don’t like cash or foreigners, they know that people of other countries don’t bargain hard.

If you tell them that you are paying with wechat, they will get an impression that you are aware of the ‘bargain hard’ custom of there.

Things you will need

You will need a friend from China or an exchanger who is willing to send you funds via WeChat. If you don’t have a friend in China, I can help you out. Just drop me a line below and we can have a deal of some kind.

A Credit or Debit card from Visa or MasterCard. The card could be of any bank from any country. This is needed only for verification.

How to open WeChat Wallet

The process is very simple, let me walk you through it. Just follow the steps given below and you should be good to go.

First of all, download and install WeChat app on your smartphone. It doesn’t matter from where you download the app. Some tutorials online are suggesting that the app must be downloaded from the soil on China. This is not the case. Even the Playstore versions work fine.

Now open your WeChat account. This works by sending a verification message to your phone number, just like WhatsApp.

After that, you will need to add someone who is willing to send you WeChat funds. If you already have someone, in your wechat contact list who is willing to do it, skip this step.

Next, you will start a conversation with the friend or exchanger and ask him to send you 5 CNY via the WeChat Transfer option. Don’t forget to mention the transfer option. The Red Packet doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Once they have sent you the amount, you will receive the amount and this is where WeChat will ask you to either provide a China Government ID or verify via Visa/MasterCard. Select the card option and enter your card number.

On the next screen, it will ask you to provide your details. This includes the card type, your name, your address and some other details.

Once you have provided all the details required, you should now have the wallet option enabled and the funds should be in your wechat wallet.

Things you can & can’t do with your WeChat wallet

After you have successfully completed the process give above, you should have extra options that you can now use. But there are still some limitations. Because you are not a Chinese citizen or you don’t have a bank account in China, you can not load funds into the WeChat wallet from your card. I know that you have attached your card with WeChat but that link is just for the verification. It doesn’t give you the option to transfer funds between your bank account and WeChat wallet.

Other than that, you can receive funds, send payments, make purchases in stores and use any other service that accepts WeChat.

How to top up WeChat wallet without chinese bank account?

Now that you have successfully opened/enabled your WeChat wallet, the next thing should be loading funds in it. As I have already told that you can not use your credit/debit card to topup wechat wallet, your options are limited here as well.

If you are in China, you can easily exchange cash with a friend and get WeChat funds from him. However, if you are not in China, you will find it very difficult to do because WeChat is not popular at all anywhere except China. The second option is using a 3rd party exchange service that allows you to pay via PayPal or Card and sends the Wechat CNY in exchange. There are quite a few exchanges out there but I can not recommend any because I haven’t used them.

How to withdraw funds from WeChat wallet?

I personally think that you should not enable WeChat wallet if you are not visiting China or you are already in China. But if you have to use WeChat because you are working for someone in China, your options are even more limited. Wechat is a very closed system and it can either send & receive funds from a Chinese Bank account or from some wechat user.

Basically, exchange is the only option for “withdrawal” of WeChat funds. You will need to find someone who is willing to take WeChat funds and pay you via your desired payment method. Maybe you can sell your WeChat balance to someone who is visiting China from your circle.

I know it sounds very sketchy to provide your personal details to a Chinese company but unfortunately that is the only way to get WeChat wallet outside China. I would recommend you to get this feature, especially if you are making a trip to China.

That’s it for this tutorial on how to open WeChat wallet outside China without Chinese ID or Bank account. If you liked this tutorial and found it helpful then make sure to share it with others and also don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for more updates like this one.